THE LAW SCHOOLS AND THE COURTS civil law in North America remains confined as in 1856 substantially to the province of Quebec and the state of Louisiana. Sir Henry Maine's vision of the new grandeur of the Roman law has vanished, but he was right in saying that the accumulation of case-law conveyed a menace of revolution. It threatens to-day the disintegration of the common law. Independent legislatures and independent courts are busy all over the common law world in sending out new statutes and decisions. In 1901 Professor Maitland said mournfully, " Unity of law is precarious. The power of the parliament of the United Kingdom to legislate for the colonies is fast receding into the ghostly company of legal fictions." As to the possible unifying power of the jurisdiction of the Privy Council he says, "It seems to me idle to believe that distant parts of the earth will supply a tribunal at Westminster with enough work to secure uniformity."1 In the United States forty-six state legis latures and the national Congress are enacting statutes and the highest courts of the several states are pouring out new cases. No industry can cope with this mass of matter. It is becoming more difficult every year to read thoroughly the decisions of any jurisdiction except one's own. Nothing that the ingenuity of law publishers can devise will ever remove or much abate the difficulty. Nothing can stop it except stopping the decisions or the reports. As Burke said, "To put an end to the reports is to put an end to the law of England."2 The courts of each state will have to rely more and more upon the labors of other men to keep informed as to the course of decisions in other jurisdictions and the general development of the law. That means a greater reliance upon text-books. The text-books should be of a new kind. In the middle ages, after the Glossators had
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overlaid the Roman law with commenta ries, a reaction set in and a new school arose with the war-cry, "Back to the texts."1 In our time the common law world is ready for the cry, "Back to the principles," or rather, since the movement is a forward movement, perhaps the war-cry should be, "On to the principles." Books which shall state the principles of law in the form of well-reasoned treatises, developing the principles analytically, systematically, and historically, not as mere indexes to the cases, are much needed and will be wel comed. To produce such books will re quire patient labor, but their influence will be great. The need for them is the opportunity of the law schools. One of the advantages which will result from them is brevity in the statement fo the law. Another is that they will tend, probably, to uniformity of law and to avert the menace of disintegration. Professors ex pound the law as a science, and it is the nature of all science to be general and universal. There will undoubtedly be con tradictory theories and opinions expressed by different writers upon various doctrines, just as in the Roman law the jurists were divided for centuries into the rival schools of Sabinians and Proculians, but as a body the professors and teachers of law are likely to stand for uniformity of law. A general consensus of opinion among them would be a valuable aid to the courts in their efforts to establish uniform rules. The other fact favorable to the influence of law schools is the change which is going on in the law in the effort to adjust it to new industrial conditions and the demands of new social ideals. The capacity of the common law to adapt itself to new condi tions through the action of the courts is being put to the test. That there is in the courts a power to mould the law to conform to new conditions of society is generally 1 English Law and the Renaissance, 33. 2 Report from committee to inspect the Lords' conceded. Many examples of the exercise
Journals, cited by Maitland, English Law and Renaissance, p. 78, n. 50.
1 Maitland, ut supra, 40, note 8.
